The Devil In Fineprint

This article appeared in The Times of India sometime in February 2006. It is a real eye opener.

IT firm Geodesic’s stock has had a meteoric rise over the last year. Yet, a recent research report unearths some curious accounting practices, says Dinesh Narayanan

For some strange reason, a few technology companies across the world manage to rustle up exuberance that borders on the irrational. And then, the stock markets, pregnant with hope, propel prices through the sky. Dig a little deeper, and what emerges is a story of, well, hype. Closer home, Geodesic Information Systems, a stock market darling, fits the bill.
Touted as one among a handful of next generation IT product companies, Geodesic was started in 1999 by four young entrepreneurs—Pankaj Kumar, Kiran Kulkarni, Mahesh Murthy and Prashant Mulekar. Geodesic made headlines when it announced the launch of Mundu, an instant messenger that allows the user to chat across different services at the same time. So if you’re chatting on Yahoo, Mundu messenger allows you to simultaneously access MSN, Google, Indiatimes and Rediff.
The excitement this software generated rubbed off on the firm’s stock price. Coupled with the right kind of noises the company made, the stock price rose by over 175% in the year up to November 2005. A Rs 2 paid-up share of the company trades at over Rs 225 on the stock exchanges. Interest in the company is so high that foreign investors now own more than half of it.
Many more want a piece of it. In November last year, prompted by requests from clients, foreign broking firm CLSA decided to take a close look at the stock’s fundamentals. The 11-page CLSA report, a copy of which is in TOI’s possession, wasn’t very flattering. For one, Geodesic had very high cash and equivalents—Rs 41 crore—surely a sign of robust health. The six-year-old fledgling had net profits of Rs 18 crore on sales of Rs 40 crore for 2004-05. When CLSA looked closer, it was stumped. Apparently, 83% of the cash in hand were cheques in hand. Mind you, it isn’t quite the same as cash in the bank. That was just Rs 6.3 crore and investments accounted for Rs 4.7 crore. In fact, investments had dwindled from the previous year’s level of Rs 12 crore, a reflection on the firm’s poor treasury operations considering the way equities and mutual funds have performed.
Geodesic’s management has an explanation: they claim the money was deployed in various i n t e r- c o r p o r at e deposits and mutual fund schemes that were withdrawn at the end of the year. So the redemption payments were shown as cheques in hand. “Also the company received payments from some clients, which for their cash management purposes, were issued to Geodesic towards the year-end. All these cheques have been encashed immediately and paid to creditors with the balance invested in mutual funds,’’ it said.
Yet the company did have a few large creditors waiting. Sundry creditors had jumped to Rs 12.1 crore (77% of expenditure) from a mere Rs 32 lakh in the previous year. That was pretty high for a company which spends mostly on salary, conveyance and software development, CLSA thought. Geodesic’s explanation: the rise was partly because of payments due for capital expenditure and also some implementation services.
The broking firm also found it odd that employees’ salaries, on average at Rs 30,000, was rather low by industry standards. That employees were compensated by stock options didn’t find too many takers at CLSA. How then, did Geodesic manage to keep its attrition rate low at 2-3%, the broking firm asked?
On its part, Geodesic argued that after including ESOPs (employee stock options), the average salary works out to about Rs 90,000 per month, which helped them attract and retain talent. However, CLSA has pointed out, if ESOPs expense were to be considered at Rs 60,000 per employee, then Geodesic’s reported profit would be lower by Rs 6 crore or 30%.
Consider the math: at current prices, the total gain per employee is Rs 100 per option and a cumulative gain of Rs 6 crore to the employees (as mentioned by the company) from options of 2004-05, CLSA said.
However, it says, in earlier years such gains would not have boosted employees profits as the share was trading as low as Rs 20-30 apiece. “FY03 and FY04 were critical years for product development at Geodesic as its Mundu messenger platform was being developed and perfected,’’ the report said.
At the same time, Geodesic appeared to be quite liberal with accounting for software development expenses of Rs 2.8 crore for Mundu and Rs 2.3 crore for Hamarashop Retail Kiosk in the year. It merely capitalised them. Criticising the practice, CLSA said, “...even though allowed by accounting law, it is not a conservative accounting policy to capitalise developmental expenditure in our view.’’ The report also quotes Geodesic as saying that the company earned Rs 1 crore per annum from Indiatimes for its Mundu messenger. Sources at Indiatimes told TOI that the company paid much less than that claimed by Geodesic. When contacted, the company said that as a policy it does not comment on individual clients.
The broking firm also found it odd that promoters should sell their holdings in a company that held tremendous promise. Over the last four years, promoters’ holding have more than halved to 25%. Even in absolute numbers, the holdings have reduced from about 2.4 crore shares to about 1.5 crore shares, despite a 1:1 bonus issue in February last year.

A Geodesic spokesperson said: “Recently there has been an imputation that Geodesic’s promoters have been exiting the company. We would like to clarify that it’s actually the reverse. The total value of Geodesic shares sold by the promoters was Rs 10 crore—not even 1% of the company’s market capitalisation of Rs 1,300 crore. A major portion of stock sales by Geodesic promoters was in favour of institutional shareholders, with the proceeds of the sales being invested in Geodesic as preference shares or highly priced preferentially allotted shares. The promoters’ investment in Geodesic is a significant Rs 300 crore (at current market value).’’ For Geodesic, there could still be a jackpot at the end of the rainbow. But if one were to look at the track record of IT firms like Infosys and Wipro, the market tends to reward those that stick to conservative and transparent accounting practices.
Source: The Times of India Mumbai Edition